A few days ago, I was given the task of calling the offices of roughly 45 German members of the European Parliament to follow up on a conference invitation we had sent several weeks ago. I am not even fond of calling up strangers on the phone in English, let alone tripping over my German with the impatient underlings of high-level politicians.
But as with everything, practice makes perfect, and after repeating my broken-record speech several times, the calls were no longer so intimidating.
Yet, when making so many calls saying the same thing, it can be tricky to keep track of whom exactly one is calling, especially when I had to skip several names because I didn't reach anyone in the office. And so it came to pass that I took part in the following highly embarrassing exchange:
Kendra: "Hello, this is Kendra from Peace Brigades International......and we
were checking if Mr. Republican would be able attend."
Lady: "Mr. Republican?! This is the office of Ms. Democrat. You have the completely wrong party!"
Kendra: "Oh, excuse me........but, um, Ms. Democrat is actually on our list as well. Will she be attending
the conference?"
Lady: "You should really pay better attention to who you are calling."
Whoops.
No comments:
Post a Comment